Pages

Violence Against Women

Monday, September 28, 2015

By: Professor Elizabeth Sheehy*“Feminists have this
nasty habit of counting bodies and refusing not to notice their gender,”
Catharine Mackinnon wrote in 1987.

Along with the family
and friends of Carol Culleton, Anastasia Kuzyk, and Nathalie Warmerdam, I mourn
these women’s deaths. All were killed within hours of each other on September
22, 2015 in the Ottawa Valley of Ontario. Basil Borutski, their former intimate
partner, has been charged with three counts of murder.

There are tragedies
upon tragedies here. It is tragic that it takes a mass homicide of women to get
the kind of local media and soul-searching that has ensued, while the everyday
killing of women—one every six days nationally—marches on with barely a
comment. For Indigenous women we seem to need even more blood to pay
attention—only a monstrous accumulation of lost lives of girls and women
tallying into the hundreds and thousands will make us blink. Even though we are
in midst of an election campaign and these most recent killings took place the
day after the so-called leaders’ “debate” on women’s issues, which included
violence against women as a topic, the candidates have eschewed comment—as
noted by Sadiya Ansari here. No leadership to be
found here.

It is tragic that
media coverage has barely moved beyond the contradictory messages that leave us
in stalemate. On the one hand, the same old, tired interviews where members of
the community express their surprise and describe Borutski as a nice guy. On
the other the headlines that suggest that men like Borutski are “unstoppable”. Are men like
Borutski benign individuals who have inexplicably snapped? Or are they raging
madmen whose actions are predictable but unpreventable? We are left again
without leadership: ought we simply give up—nothing to be done?

It is tragic that this
is the first time the criminal charges—first-degree murder—seem commensurate
with the actions of the accused. After all, the criminal justice system had
years and multiple opportunities to get this right for Borutski. He was
convicted of causing property damage, assault police and failure to provide a
breath sample. But charges for threatening his ex-wife with death and
assaulting her, for assaulting Warmerdam, for criminal harassment of a fifth
woman and for assault against a sixth, were all stayed by Crown prosecutors.

Yes, the newspapers
report that he was convicted of “choking” Kuzyk, but the truth is we have no
such crime. Like Bonnie Mooney, whose terrible experience at the hands of her
ex-partner and the criminal justice system I describe in my book, Defending Battered Women on Trial: Lessons from the Transcripts it seems he was
convicted of simple assault—not attempted murder, assault endangering life, or
likely even assault causing bodily harm. The criminal justice system completely
failed to appropriately condemn Borutski’s violence or to capture the acute
endangerment his victims faced. And without convictions for serious crimes of
violence he could not have been designated the “dangerous offender” that he
appears to be. Borutski could not have been kept in jail without that
determination. No leadership here either.

It is tragic that we
are not also mourning the half-lives these women lived in dread, some for
decades. They had to engage in a charade of what others take for granted as
normal life—working, caring for their children, trying to move on into hopeful lives,
all while fearing that their worst nightmare would come true, living in
hyper-vigilance and looking over their shoulder. They used monitoring devices
and safety plans, and probably healthy doses of denial, every day of their
lives. We know that these weren’t the only women whose lives were derailed by
Borutski, because at least three other women turned to police for aid. The life
of his ex-wife—Mary Ann Borutski—was spared on September 22nd, but her health
has not been, as the crippling sequelae of domestic terrorism continue to wreak
havoc on her.

We don’t know how many
other Ontario women will now re-live the trauma Borutski caused them as they
wonder whether they too were on his list. Or how many women, on the run from
violent men, whose blood ran cold when they heard this terrible news. We seem
prepared to accept such vast human wreckage—and I’m not here even counting the
children of the women—and we will not countenance battered women who kill
rather than die themselves, if our media is any reflection of public sentiment. Where to turn for leadership, for something we can do?

Feminists are
still “counting the bodies”—and we have to if we are to save women’s lives.
Only the independent women’s movement has fought shoulder-to-shoulder with
women escaping male violence for more than forty years, using the knowledge
they have gained to identify factors and patterns that put women at acute risk;
bearing witness to women’s suffering and providing counseling and support;
accompanying them to police and to court, arguing with police, prosecutors and
sometimes even judges; creating and sustaining shelters for them and their
kids; helping women plan safe exits and create new lives; and advocating
tirelessly for changes to social welfare, family law, social housing, health
care, policing, prosecution practices and to the criminal law itself. The first
ever 70-country studythat evaluated
change over four decades has concluded that the most important factor in
predicting positive and enduring policy shifts to combat violence against women
is feminist mobilization.

We simply cannot stop the Basil Borutskis
without looking male violence against women in the eye before women are killed,
and only the independent women’s movement can tell us how to do this. There are
no shortcuts.ELIZABETH SHEEHY, LL.B., LL.M., LL.D. (Honoris causa), FRSC, is Vice Dean Research and Shirley Greenberg Chair for Women and the Legal Profession at the University of Ottawa Faculty of Law. She teaches Criminal Law and Procedure, Sexual Assault Law, and Defending Battered Women on Trial.